First, I don't have any news on Kaylee other than they were chasing lizards and were on the radio doing a broadcast and that they worked on painting today, instead of outside clean-up work. No other news, just those literal quotes of snippets of info, but hopefully they are doing well and getting done what they needed to.
So, my interesting day. First flight of the day was in the 421. We went up to 17,500' to test out the fuel pumps and our idea. Get up to altitude, run a test, and the engines stumble. Do what we think will have it not do that, test it, and they both about quit. So, that didn't work, and we do what DOES fix it, and continue our merry way, go to Ohio, shoot an approach, make a landing, and come home. I get on the ground, and Steve and I run a couple of errands, go eat lunch at Subway, and head back to the airport where I fly with a guy in the T-6. He has quite a few hours now, about 5 with me, and is doing pretty well. He's also the one that I had the flat tire with. Today he wanted to go work on stalls, so we go high and get above the clouds and do slow flight, into minimum controllable airspeed, into power off stalls, and then into the more aggressive stalls. We do a stall turning to the left, I've talked about what to do when it goes over, and so it stalls, flips us upside down, and he unloads the wing in a bit of a ferocious manner, and I see something go flying past by me. About 1000' lower later, we recover, and I look down, and it's a thick wooden handled screwdriver. :o Yikes. I called off any more stalls after that as I really don't want it going down by the control surfaces, don't want it flying through a window, and super don't want it flying into my face/head. So that was the end of that lesson! The thing was, the map compartment didn't fly open this time. That thing was already down there somewhere, and nothing else had caused it to fly up until this one. Hopefully that's the last of the loose stuff! Surely nothing is left, because I'm pretty sure I'd have seen it today! Next I flew in the 172 with a the new girl, and she did great, and nothing stumbled or went upside down on us and it was very uneventful. Not bad now and then. ;) I had one hour, so I ran Kaylee's car through a car wash and got my eyebrows waxed, then it was time to run back out and hop in a different 172 down to Westfield, where the owner of the airport told me he'd been getting calls by people living in an apartment complex that airplanes were cutting their engines over their apartment and they were scared somebody was going to crash on them. *le sigh*. I took the Champ back to Kokomo so they could do some work on the tailwheel. I can tell it needs it. I can push the rudders left and right quite far in and the plane doesn't even swerve a little bit. Talk about sloppy. The 172 pilot flew loose formation off behind me for the fun/practice of it, and got a picture of me and I of him. Finished putting that plane away, and Steve was done with his guy, so we ran to eat dinner, and got home around 9 pm.
One day to go before we leave for Oshkosh. We're probably going to drive up with Nathan instead of fly up. The weather looks yucky Friday and Saturday, and we want to get out of here and go up on Friday and not be all last-minute unsure of what's going on or how or when we're getting there. I like flying into Oshkosh in theory and I dislike driving 12-14 hours in reality, but...I'm not feeling the flying this year. So tomorrow I have students until it's time to run Ann down to Tennessee to be with Lon and Cathy, get home 7:30-8 pm most likely, and then I'll pack and get ready for Friday. I think we're doing okay on getting most stuff done and ready...
This is literally me during every takeoff and landing and during stalls and during any sort of aggressive maneuvering. I'm not in general a hovering type person while training in airplanes, but buddy, I hover here.
My guy today in the pattern
Justin in 32L behind me
The most relaxing flying I'd done all day. Alone. Window wide open. Nice breeze. Nothing exciting.
Sun on the face, feels good on a nice day.
I saw my shadow. Started flying with my left hand, leveling off while turning my camera on and snapping the photo with my right hand, just before touching down. Because I felt like it.
The photo Justin took of me in the air in front of him. I think I see my hand in the window taking HIS photo and neither of us knew the other was doing it right then. lol
A couple more photos from Ohio. Me on the wing.
Going over a briefing..
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